By Bill McCarhty -
Politifact
Conservative analyst Dinesh D'Souza attacked Senator Kamala Harris in an Instagram post, accusing her of avoiding the press since Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential hopeful, chose her as his vice presidential candidate in mid-September. August.
“Kamala Harris was elected as Joe Biden's VP 42 days ago,” the Sept. 23 post read,
“We are 41 days away from the election.
[Harris] has not once officially answered questions from the press. "
The post was reported as part of a Facebook initiative to combat misinformation on its platform.
(Read more about Politifact's alliance with Facebook here).
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The claim appears to have originated a day earlier, when a journalist posted on Twitter that "the senator has not officially answered questions from the press once."
The tweet got thousands of
likes
and retweets and was shared by several journalists.
Eric Trump and other allies of the president, Donald Trump, also shared it.
And it jumped to Instagram when D'Souza shared it to his more than 900,000 followers.
But Harris hasn't shied away from the media, as D'Souza's Instagram post hints at.
The California senator sat down to give her first vice presidential candidate interview on Aug. 14 for the 19th News website, three days after Biden announced his decision.
Since then, Harris has given interviews to national outlets such as People, ABC News, NBC, Univision, BET, and CNN.
He also gave an interview to The Grio, a portal focused on African American readers, and appeared on the late-night Showtime talk show
Desus and Mero
.
On September 21, two days before D'Souza's post, Harris spoke with April Ryan, a reporter for Urban Radio Networks and a CNN political analyst, and was on Russ Parr's radio show.
Harris is scheduled for the September 28 episode of the MSNBC show
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
.
[Trump accuses Biden of being a socialist opposed to religion. These are the reasons why it is completely false]
Harris has also given interviews to various local media outlets.
Among the media that PolitiFact identified are three television channels and two stations in South Florida;
a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina;
two television channels in Milwaukee;
a television station in the San Francisco Bay area;
two television channels in Phoenix;
a television channel in Las Vegas;
two television channels in Philadelphia;
a television station in Detroit;
and a television station from Flint and the area known as the “Tri-Cities” in Michigan.
When a reporter asked Biden why Harris was "hardly seen" at a press conference on Sept. 4, Biden said she had been busy campaigning.
“She's been on the road,” Biden said, “She's on her own.
That's the role, that's how it was when Barack [Obama] and I did our campaign, we tried to cover as much territory as possible and both of us were on the campaign trail ”.
The journalist who posted the first tweet later clarified what she wanted to say in a second post on Twitter, made in response to a question, which was shared much less.
Shivaram said Harris has, in fact, given interviews to national and local media in the states he has visited.
What Harris hasn't done, Shivaram wrote, is have an informal session where journalists covering his campaign tours can ask questions, beyond "shouting a few."
“To clarify, [Harris] has answered questions,” he posted on Twitter in response to a retweet from another journalist, “but we are shouting those questions as we go from room to room, or while she walks from one event to another.
There has been nothing more formal than that ”.
D'Souza did not speak for this article.
Our rating
Verification Tag-FALSE-PolitifactPolitifact-Telemundo
An Instagram post says Harris "hasn't officially answered questions from the press once" since Biden named her his vice presidential running.
This is incorrect.
Harris has been featured in the media numerous times and given several interviews since the Aug. 11 announcement.
We rate this Instagram post as
fake
.
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